Aditya Birla Retail is looking to increase its total number of supermarkets in the country to 500 by March, Sumant Sinha, CEO, Aditya Birla Retail said. "From the current 350 we will be scaling up our supermarkets to 500 by March 2008," he said, while announcing the re-branding of Fabmall grocery supermarkets to 'more'.
By his own admission, the last 30 months have been one of the toughest in Thomas Varghese's 29-year career. The 50-year-old chief executive of Aditya Birla Retail, however, quickly adds that they have been 'very interesting and challenging too'.
The retailer, which runs a supermarket chain under the More brand, is targeting annual sales of $4.5 billion (Rs 22,000 crore or Rs 220 billion) by March 2014 from Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion) in the current financial year. The retailer clocked sales of Rs 500 in the previous year. In 2007, the company had talked about a Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) investment plan.
Aditya Birla Retail on Thursday said its sales, even in Pune, have not been impacted by the spreading disease swine flu.
Last year, Trent had entered into a tie-up with The Xander Group wherein Xander was to invest in malls along with local developers and Trent was to be the anchor tenant. Currently, three-to-four such malls are being developed in cities such as Surat and Ahmedabad.
Sources said the company would rope in private equity players in the next round of financing within a year. After reaching a particular scale, the company would also come out with an initial public offer, they added.
Aditya Birla Retail Limited (ABRL), the retail arm of the Aditya Birla Group, would be investing Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 80-100 billion) in expanding its operations across the country over a period of five years.
'As re-industrialisation gathers pace across regions like Asia, Europe and the US, a wide range of products and inputs will see demand.'
The acquisition of Trinethra Super Retail would put the Aditya Birla group ahead of competition, including Reliance, analysts tracking the development said.
Analysts are increasingly optimistic about India's capital markets, with HDFC AMC, CAMS, and KFin Technologies identified as top investment picks. This optimism stems from a structural shift in household savings towards financial instruments and an expected multi-year earnings expansion for market infrastructure providers and asset management companies.
Major paint companies in India, including Asian Paints, Berger Paints, Akzo Paints, and Kansai Nerolac, have announced price hikes ranging from 1% to 8% across various product lines, effective from mid-March to late April, in response to persistently high crude oil and gas prices.
The company is also looking at recruiting employees from outside India, especially for services and expertise that people in India lack.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday announced an increase in the Securities Transaction Tax (STT) on Futures and Options trade with a view to discouraging small investors from speculative trading in derivatives, which led to a sharp decline in the stock market.
Gurugram, already established as the corporate hub of Delhi-NCR, is increasingly attracting developers from outside the region, drawn by robust end-user demand, premium pricing, and emerging development opportunities.
2025 marked a shift in investor preference when it comes to MF schemes.
Asian Paints reported a good performance for the second quarter (July-September) of 2025-26 (Q2FY26), with some help from base effects, despite strong competition and extended monsoon. Volume grew in low double digits in the key domestic decorative paints, and value in that segment grew by 6 per cent. Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) grew 21 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), and PAT (profit after tax) grew 14 per cent. Asian Paints also defended market share better after several quarters where it had lost ground to Birla Opus.
In December, Aryaman Birla made a decision that would surprise many: he announced an 'indefinite sabbatical' from cricket.
Chef Ranveer Brar walked as showstopper for Tarun Tahiliani's Tasva collection at the FDCI x Lakme Fashion Week 2025 in Delhi.
'The outlook for the next Samvat is more constructive, as many of the earlier drags are gradually becoming supports.'
The strong domestic flow offset selling by foreign portfolio investors who pulled out $23.3 billion (Rs 2.03 trillion) from domestic equity markets in CY25.
The Aditya Birla Group mayrestructure plan to bring all its retail verticals under Pantaloon Fashion & Retail.
Amazon has also signed a term sheet with Kishore Biyani-led Future group to invest $600 million to $700 million for a 12 to 15 per cent stake in the retail giant, it is learnt.
Amid controversy over USPresident Donald Trump's comments linking the use of Tylenol and other related paracetamol products by pregnant women to autism in children, experts and industry executives say that since India's export of the drug to the US is less, it will hardly affect the country's pharma exports to America.
Who else will take on the might of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon if not the Adanis, Ambanis, Birlas, or Tatas?, asks R Jagannathan.
'Unlike Big Bazaar, where the promoter calls the shot, in ABRL, professionals take decisions. So, every new CEO leads to a change in strategy, which confuses vendors and the team.'
AV Birla Group chairman, Kumar Mangalam Birla and the chief executive officer of Aditya Birla Retail, Sumant Sinha bare the details, in this open-ended conversation, about their plans for Aditya Birla Retail.
Like other food and grocery chains, Birla Retail is aggressively pushing its private labels and large packs to woo customers. Besides offering value, private labels push retailers' margins.
'We want to play the value game for our consumers, which is health and retail will grow faster for us than the group.'
On the heels of Reliance Industries foraying into the lucrative retail business, Birla Group too contemplates rolling out its organised retail initiative.
The Aditya Birla Group, which rolled out its retail chain More recently, is studying the possibilities of creating linkages between its corporate social responsibility projects in the farm sector with the retail business of sourcing farm produce.
Competition from kirana stores, low margins and property and supply chain issues delay break-even.
Some of the domestic biggies like Future Group, Reliance Retail and Aditya Birla Retail, while welcoming the government's move to allow 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail and completely open single-brand retail, said it will take time for foreign rivals to make presence felt on their own in the Indian retail landscape.
With confidence creeping back into the market place and rentals down up to 50 per cent, large retailers are back to drawing up aggressive growth plans. In the next one year, Aditya Birla Retail, Bharti Enterprises, Reliance Retail, Trent, Mahindra Retail and others hope to open new stores spread over five million square feet.
While some like RPG's Spencer's and Wadhawan group's Spinach say it will encourage them to invest more in cold chains, others such as Aditya Birla Retail and Future Group said the announcement has come too late and helps fresh produce and chilled product suppliers more than retailers.
Sumant Sinha, CEO, Aditya Birla Retail, says that Trinethra's doing well, but he's worried about high real estate prices.
The latest trigger has been Future group's buyout talk with the retail unit of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu's family-owned Heritage Foods
Retail players are planning to expand but with caution. It seems the slowdown of 2008-09 is still weighing on their minds.
Aditya Birla Group has announced its foray into the branded jewellery space with an investment of around Rs 5,000 crore and will battle it out with Titan's Tanishq and Reliance Industries- Reliance Jewel. The business will be housed in a new venture, "Novel Jewel", and will open large-format exclusive stores across the country with its in-house jewellery brands, the company said in its release. "The new venture will seek to transform customer experience by creating an aspirational national brand with unique designs and a strong regional flavour.
Did top Indian business groups miss the e-commerce opportunity by focusing on replicating the Walmart model instead of following the Amazon model of online shopping?
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